Anti-Gay NOM, FRC Angered By SPLC's 'Hate Group' Label

The SPLC has placed the National
Organization for Marriage (NOM), the nation's most vociferous
opponent of gay marriage, and the Family Research Council (FRC),
which objects to gay rights, on the same list of hate groups as the
Ku Klux Klan, the Nation of Islam and the Aryan Nations.

According to the group's website, all
the 932 U.S. hate group on its list “have beliefs or practices that
attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their
immutable characteristics.”

The designation could weaken the FRC,
which hosts the annual conservative celebrity-studded Values Voter
Summit in Washington, and threaten the fundraising efforts of NOM.

“The left's smear campaign of
conservatives is … being driven by the clear evidence that the
American public is losing patience with their radical policy agenda
as seen in the recent election and in the fact that every state …
that has had the opportunity to defend the natural definition of
marriage has done so,” FRC President Tony Perkins said in a
statement.

NOM's president Brian Brown also called
the designation an attack.

“This is about protecting marriage,”
Brown said. “This isn't about being anti-anyone. The whole idea
that somehow those folks who stand up for traditional marriage, like
the Family Research Council, are hateful is wrong. [The law center
is] trying to marginalize and intimidate folks for standing up for
marriage and also trying to equate them somehow with the KKK.”

But in arguing their positions, both
groups have endorsed some hateful speech.